Open World Domination: Mirage

Comments

I think I should say thank you. As a returning player from the pre-HoT era I was a bit overwhelmed. Was working toward chrono (like the wells) and planing to create my first ascended set (Commander) but now I think that it's good idea to try a mirage beforehand. Your Trailblazer setup looks very tempting so... I guess I'll try Rabid to get a feeling.
And Thank you.

@Roziotti.9420 said:
I think I should say thank you. As a returning player from the pre-HoT era I was a bit overwhelmed. Was working toward chrono (like the wells) and planing to create my first ascended set (Commander) but now I think that it's good idea to try a mirage beforehand. Your Trailblazer setup looks very tempting so... I guess I'll try Rabid to get a feeling.
And Thank you.

I'm really liking the Trailblazer set. Since Viper Mirage is ~80% condi damage, I suspected that dropping power and precision wouldn't hurt too much. It's most noticeable in the increase to ramp-up time, but once you get going you really lose surprisingly little damage. I also had in mind that I could take advantage of Trailblazer's passive tankiness to adjust in other areas and compensate for the damage loss. Toward that I end, I swapped out adventurer runes for the nightmare/trapper setup.

I did some benchmarks with my go-to bosses: Chak Lobber and Zintl Inquisitor. Between the nerfs and reduced burst from Trailblazer, the Inqusitior with all his little adds went a bit slower than previously. Still, I was able to reliably defeat this challenge before the adds could respawn. Surprisingly, against the more or less single target Chak Lobber I was able to match my Viper build in damage output. It's also passed the test against various champions including all of the bandits and the executioner, various PoF champions and legendaries (including a few I couldn't beat with Viper!), and basically everything else.

I really wanted to share some video with the new setup, but I'm getting really poor framerates again (in the recording, not actual gameplay) and nothing has been usable. But I'll share with you some results from tonight.

I made 18 attempts on the Mushroom Queen in Tangled Depths. Zero deaths. Best time: 1:50, at around 7k DPS. For comparison, the video I have of this boss up on my channel was done in Viper gear back in early April and completed in 2:33. In the earlier video I was forced to play much more defensively. She quickly forced my Viper build out of melee range. However, the much tankier Trailblazer setup can afford to trade blows with the boss and stand in her ground cover if it means finishing burst rotations with axe/torch.

It's remarkable how well Trailblazer performs in open world. 7k DPS is sufficient to beat timers on legendary PoF bounties and to take down any HoT HP champion in a couple minutes or less. It's more than adequate. And you can take hits that would flatten a glass build, which means you can play ultra aggressively! I might be in love.

@AliamRationem.5172
What is your opinion about the current state of scepter? Can it be an alternative to a staff? Is it possible to use the Trailblazer set in other activities like a fractal without a significant loss of damage? Have any tips on rotation?

For the time being, it is more difficult for me to survive on a mirage than a chronomancer because of the protection on two swords and the well giving the Aegis boon. Need to get used to correctly positioning myself, and to save evades. Do you have any advice on how to do this better?

@Roziotti.9420 said:@AliamRationem.5172
What is your opinion about the current state of scepter? Can it be an alternative to a staff? Is it possible to use the Trailblazer set in other activities like a fractal without a significant loss of damage? Have any tips on rotation?

For the time being, it is more difficult for me to survive on a mirage than a chronomancer because of the protection on two swords and the well giving the Aegis boon. Need to get used to correctly positioning myself, and to save evades. Do you have any advice on how to do this better?

I don't like scepter. I think it needs a lot of work. But you can do whatever you like! It's open world. Staff is not going to top the DPS charts in raids or fractals either.

I also don't recommend trailblazer for raids or high end fractals (e.g. t4 challenge modes). But outside of that I think it would be perfectly adequate for your average pickup fractal daily run in any tier.

On how to survive, it should be pretty easy with mirage because you do have access to so many evades. The setup I use has on-demand evades every 8 seconds with axes of symmetry, every 9 seconds from sigil of energy, every 20 seconds from illusionary ambush, every 25 seconds from False Oasis and every 5 seconds from vigor + food regen. This equates to about 50% evade uptime to start with. But you also have access to stealth, blind, invuln, a little bit of aegis, several teleports, and some solid CC options as well. The trailblazer setup is quite resilient via passive defenses on top of this.

I try to keep an eye on endurance. What I want to avoid is having below 50% endurance and no other damage avoidance available. If I'm about to end up in that position, it's usually a good time to swap weapons to proc sigil of energy or, if swap is still on cooldown, use stealth or teleports to buy some time to recover. The most common example of this is chaining evades and cooldowns to avoid damage while bursting with axe, then swapping to staff and immediately using staff 2 to teleport backward out of range once my available defense options are exhausted.

Mostly I expect the key to staying alive is practice. But if you have the resources for it, Trailblazer certainly helps to take the edge off and still deals surprisingly good damage despite its tankiness. And there's no reason you couldn't use it with scepter and still do fractals. I'd just say stay away from raids and t4 fractal challenge modes is all. You might try a build with the illusions trait line if you want to use scepter. I expect it may work better.

Looking back, I may have been a bit too vague, depending upon your ability to follow my example.

When you see yourself running out of ways of outright avoiding attacks (i.e. evades, blocks, and invulns) and you either don't wish to or can't afford to remain at melee range, your best option is to get to range. Swapping is instant and staff 2 is instant. So it's a quick way of escaping to range. But when you swap to staff you also proc sigil of energy. You are now at range with 50% + X (whatever your previously remaining endurance) meaning that you essentially have 2 seconds of dodge ready to go. However, since you gain 2s reflect following an evade and you are now at range, you can often safely drag that out for 4 seconds. You can then use staff 5 a few seconds later to produce some aegis.

Estimate that just by swapping you've likely covered 50% of your time until another weapon swap and probably recovered a good 4-5 seconds on your cooldowns while more or less invulnerable to damage. It's a defense that is pretty hard to beat in open world play, if you think about it. You just have to practice until you're comfortable with it. Trailblazer will make it much easier, if you can afford it!

The extremely low framerates I've been experiencing in my recordings persist, unfortunately. However, every once in awhile I'm able to get something usable. I felt this one was a worthy demonstration of just how strong the Trailblazer build is. I hope you enjoy watching my Legendary Starcaller solo as much as I enjoyed fighting this boss. He really is one of the coolest bounties out there!

Nothing major on the PvE side. The only change that impacts my current build is Chaotic Transference. Nothing game-changing here. On the PvP/WvW side of things, reduced vigor uptime may have an impact.

As someone running the staff/staff trailblazer variant the only real change is the nerf to nightmare/trapper meaning you need to switch to renegade or undead for viper/trailblazer respectively. Torment runes are potentially a large boost to survivability without losing damage but I havent spent the ~50 gold on them yet to see if they will change.

Thats easy to explain, weapon swap sigils exist. Using energy sigils is a really good increase to the ability to use ambush attacks. I find I get better damage with energy sigils than a swap to axe/torch due to staff ambush being an amazing might generator.

Another example is on condition necromancer, especially reaper. Back before scourge it was really nice running hydromancy/geomancy sigils in scepter/dagger x scepter/dagger for a aoe 6 bleed 10 second cooldown attack that was way better than swapping to staff.

Greetings! I'm planning on making a Mirage and this build looks kinda fun (at least to me) XD Just a question, since it's a double staff build, would it be okay to switch out one of the staff to a Greatsword? Thanks

Greetings! I'm planning on making a Mirage and this build looks kinda fun (at least to me) XD Just a question, since it's a double staff build, would it be okay to switch out one of the staff to a Greatsword? Thanks

You will probably lose a little in translation doing so. If you take Viper or Trailblazer stats, you just won't get value from the condition portion of the stat prefix on a GS. The double staff swap makes lots of sense. The only drawback I can think of is if you face mobs that reflect and of course, on easier trash mobs, building up condi is a rather slow approach for little gain. Then again, no one is playing a build like this to bulldoze over trash mobs.

BTW, I'm loving these OWD Mirage ... it easily competes with the best pet tank builds and it more engaging.

If you think balancing is only driven by performance and justified by comparisons to other classes then prepare to be educated:

I felt like checking out the new map and storyline after taking a few months off of GW2, so naturally I went ahead and scoped out some of the new bounties as well. Pet Rock and Ettin were pretty straightforward and I was able to take them down on the first go. Sword/Shield I need to take a closer look at as I ran out of time and there are some mechanics there I wasn't clear on. The damage spikes were pretty scary there, too. But I expect once I figure out the rules of that fight it will get easier and I might be able to manage it. The wyverns so far I've only gotten in on the tail end of a squad kill, so big question mark there but from what I could tell it was pretty standard wyvern attacks. Just not sure how well being the only target for two legendary bosses is going to go on a solo attempt! We'll see!

As I said in my previous reply, I didn't expect any of the changes would have a significant impact on the PvE build I use. Confirmed! It's still pretty much invincible in open world and deals plenty of damage besides. If you aren't soloing bosses Viper might be a good choice for adding a little punch to your burst, but Trailblazer still gets the job done and nothing short of a tough champion or legendary is going to threaten you.

I played around with traits to see if anything felt better, but ended up going back to my earlier setup. If I could get better clone generation without taking dueling I'd really love to go chaos/illusions/mirage, but that setup really just screams "Shatter everything!" and I don't have the clones to make it play the way I'd really like to.

Nothing has really changed here. The only swaps I make are False Oasis/Mirror and Arcane Thievery/Signet of Midnight. If I'm using Mirror I like to swap Illusionary Defense out for Master of Manipulation, especially if I'm also using Arcane Thievery. Any condi set will work, but Viper or Trailblazer are obviously your best options because they have expertise. Viper will give you better burst for clearing the small stuff and better damage against bosses in groups, but Trailblazer will make you pretty much bulletproof against just about anything and can sometimes even out-DPS Viper on tougher boss solos where it allows you to play more aggressively.

I played around with traits to see if anything felt better, but ended up going back to my earlier setup. If I could get better clone generation without taking dueling I'd really love to go chaos/illusions/mirage, but that setup really just screams "Shatter everything!" and I don't have the clones to make it play the way I'd really like to.

Hi there, I've been gone a while and this little bit confused me, would you be able to clarify please? With the build as you linked it, it appears that I would be shattering frequently to get the benefits from 'Bountiful Disillusionment', but I'm reading your comment that you wouldn't shatter regularly. Also, would you take 4 Runes of Nightmare and 2 of Trapper, or go full Nightmare?

I played around with traits to see if anything felt better, but ended up going back to my earlier setup. If I could get better clone generation without taking dueling I'd really love to go chaos/illusions/mirage, but that setup really just screams "Shatter everything!" and I don't have the clones to make it play the way I'd really like to.

Hi there, I've been gone a while and this little bit confused me, would you be able to clarify please? With the build as you linked it, it appears that I would be shattering frequently to get the benefits from 'Bountiful Disillusionment', but I'm reading your comment that you wouldn't shatter regularly. Also, would you take 4 Runes of Nightmare and 2 of Trapper, or go full Nightmare?

Thanks for the assist!

I take dueling for clones on dodge. With the build set up to dodge so frequently, this results in excellent clone generation which you can use to feed shatters. But your shatters would be much more effective if you could take chaos/illusions/mirage. The problem, of course, is that if you do that then your clone generation is much more limited. It still works, but it's not a tradeoff I find worthwhile. I prefer to have clones on dodge from dueling and I switch between chaos or illusions (illusions for burst, chaos for better defense and boon generation usually when soloing champions).

Having said that, it's really more of a personal preference/situational thing. Any combination of chaos, dueling, and illusions trait lines paired with Mirage will work. The only trait lines I don't use are inspiration and domination as healing and direct damage don't really fit with a condi mirage build, in my opinion.

Love my Mesmer and now completed getting her HP for Mirage! Huge thanks to @AliamRationem.5172 .
Right now for gear I'm getting Dires and wanted to ask about runes. Seems undead or affliction would be the choices but leaning more to undead. Sound about right?

@Lady Vanithy.6495 said:
Love my Mesmer and now completed getting her HP for Mirage! Huge thanks to @AliamRationem.5172 .
Right now for gear I'm getting Dires and wanted to ask about runes. Seems undead or affliction would be the choices but leaning more to undead. Sound about right?

Undead runes are a good, inexpensive choice for a dire setup, especially doubling up with the Chaos traitline to gain 17% of toughness as condition damage. This translates into well over 300 additional condition damage on a full exotic set.

For inexpensive sigils that work well for open world play, corruption and stamina are good options. You can add another 250 condi damage with the stacking bonus on corruption and stamina will make you virtually invincible while also pumping up your damage as long as there are easy kills to be had.

If you get to the point where you start putting some gold into your gear and crafting ascended, Viper is a great option. Pair with 4 nightmare/2 trapper runes and malice/energy sigils for more damage. If open world is more your speed, Trailblazer is great, too. There's just not much reason to sacrifice the extra damage from Viper outside of solo play in PvE.

One thing I've noticed is that some precision is very important for bleeding from sharper images, I tested a couple different amulets in the PVP lobby and the difference between wanderer vs sage amulet was tremendous.

@Lady Vanithy.6495 said:
Love my Mesmer and now completed getting her HP for Mirage! Huge thanks to @AliamRationem.5172 .
Right now for gear I'm getting Dires and wanted to ask about runes. Seems undead or affliction would be the choices but leaning more to undead. Sound about right?

Undead runes are a good, inexpensive choice for a dire setup, especially doubling up with the Chaos traitline to gain 17% of toughness as condition damage. This translates into well over 300 additional condition damage on a full exotic set.

For inexpensive sigils that work well for open world play, corruption and stamina are good options. You can add another 250 condi damage with the stacking bonus on corruption and stamina will make you virtually invincible while also pumping up your damage as long as there are easy kills to be had.

If you get to the point where you start putting some gold into your gear and crafting ascended, Viper is a great option. Pair with 4 nightmare/2 trapper runes and malice/energy sigils for more damage. If open world is more your speed, Trailblazer is great, too. There's just not much reason to sacrifice the extra damage from Viper outside of solo play in PvE.

I figure while I'm going back and starting at the beginning with core Tyria/LW2 I could test out different gears/runes. Came across 2 pieces affordable Dires gear with affliction runes so going to give that a shot. I did change the staff I got in a chest to Mathilde Spire in the forge and put energy/malice sigils in it. Thanks for all you do! I really enjoy my Mesmer gal and feel this will be a fun experience trying out different skills as I explore before I set in stone and craft the higher end stuff.

@CallousEye.5018 said:
One thing I've noticed is that some precision is very important for bleeding from sharper images, I tested a couple different amulets in the PVP lobby and the difference between wanderer vs sage amulet was tremendous.

Not to say that precision isn't important for damage output, but you're also comparing an amulet with expertise to one without. The other thing to note is that even with a precision set like Viper, bleed damage only accounts for around 15-20% of your damage output with Sharper Image bleeds being only a portion of that. In a group PvE scenario where damage is multiplied and DPS is the only consideration, that's not insignificant. In open world, however, it's pretty negligible and particularly where it really matters in solo play (e.g. taking on a tough boss), you can actually deal comparable or even better damage with a set like Trailblazer by virtue of being able to play more aggressively.

I was playing viper mirage open world and found it pretty easy to get one shot by some bosses. I looked around and found this trailblazer build and am happy with it. It's very durable and does about the same damage. Thanks!

@NASATT.3678 said:
I was playing viper mirage open world and found it pretty easy to get one shot by some bosses. I looked around and found this trailblazer build and am happy with it. It's very durable and does about the same damage. Thanks!

Glad to be of assistance. I was surprised by it myself. I had been using Viper for quite awhile and I was able to defeat all of the HoT champions, the bandit champions + legendary executioner, as well as a majority of the PoF bounties. It worked great! But when I tried Trailblazer in those types of scenarios I found the damage was surprisingly competitive and bosses that were difficult or even seemed impossible using Viper were easily doable. It's a pretty remarkable stat set for open world, really.

It probably works so well for Mirage in particular because so much of our damage output is condi based. Even in Viper only about 15% of damage came from power-based attacks directly. As I said, that's not a small amount in a raid scenario but when you're solo it can easily be made up for with more aggressive play (e.g. spending more time in axe than staff, soaking damage to land key abilities, etc.).

My DPS Chronomancer has been going through an identity crisis lately with all the boon changes. Finally I got fed up with debating if I should bother building a boon set with things as they are now, and am in the process of converting her to Mirage using this build. Right now I'm in a mix of exotic Dire and Rabid gear, with a few pieces of ascended Trailblazer; eventual goal is full Trailblazer once I have more time for farming. Haven't tried anything like soloing champs yet, but I can say that tough veterans like the jade constructs in Ember Bay are much easier with this build than what I was using before. Kills do come a bit slower, but it's nice to feel like I can take a hit and outlast enemies instead of being fearful of a single mistake. Thanks much for this thread and all the effort you've put into this; bookmarked for future reference.

I think you are the right people who can possibly help me a lot :-)
Thank you

It's hard to tell how much difficulty you have picking these things up, but I do have a build for the type of player that is never going to "git gud" (no offense intended to anyone here!) . The build is specifically designed to be 1) Inexpensive to gear, 2) As uncomplicated as possible, and 3) As forgiving as possible.

I've basically taken it to the limits from using the most defensive weapon available and not including a weapon swap to utilizing a passive healing skill. With this setup you can literally stand in the fire and just push buttons at random. As long as you keep dodging and pushing 1 you should find making your way around PoF/HoT easy (Although soloing champions might still require you to step up your game a little bit from just pushing 1/dodge and buttons at random!).

This is the build I'm using to get use to moving/dodging. It gives me the time I need to watch what's going on around me and react. I love this build because it let's me still play the game and have success completing content.
I now have 2 mesmers - love them so! The first one I use axe/torch and Staff but was still not very good at the skills needed to avoid damage in melee and would get beat up/downed quite a bit. Now I switch to GS/Staff during events and able to stay alive lol
I love that Mirage has plenty of ways to adapt to the level of player skills and is still very much enjoyable.

I think you are the right people who can possibly help me a lot :-)
Thank you

It's hard to tell how much difficulty you have picking these things up, but I do have a build for the type of player that is never going to "git gud" (no offense intended to anyone here!) . The build is specifically designed to be 1) Inexpensive to gear, 2) As uncomplicated as possible, and 3) As forgiving as possible.

I've basically taken it to the limits from using the most defensive weapon available and not including a weapon swap to utilizing a passive healing skill. With this setup you can literally stand in the fire and just push buttons at random. As long as you keep dodging and pushing 1 you should find making your way around PoF/HoT easy (Although soloing champions might still require you to step up your game a little bit from just pushing 1/dodge and buttons at random!).

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer me. This is indeed a very good and helpful build for beginners with the profession.
I had this kind of build in mind, when posting in this thread. My problem with this build is just, that I haven't unlocked Mirage!
What I had in mind, when posting here, was if this build can be adapted for core Mesmer?
I haven't unlocked neither Mirage nor Chronomancer yet.
I have to use a core mesmer build to get through HoT or PoF to unlock both Elite professions...

I think you are the right people who can possibly help me a lot :-)
Thank you

It's hard to tell how much difficulty you have picking these things up, but I do have a build for the type of player that is never going to "git gud" (no offense intended to anyone here!) . The build is specifically designed to be 1) Inexpensive to gear, 2) As uncomplicated as possible, and 3) As forgiving as possible.

I've basically taken it to the limits from using the most defensive weapon available and not including a weapon swap to utilizing a passive healing skill. With this setup you can literally stand in the fire and just push buttons at random. As long as you keep dodging and pushing 1 you should find making your way around PoF/HoT easy (Although soloing champions might still require you to step up your game a little bit from just pushing 1/dodge and buttons at random!).

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer me. This is indeed a very good and helpful build for beginners with the profession.
I had this kind of build in mind, when posting in this thread. My problem with this build is just, that I haven't unlocked Mirage!
What I had in mind, when posting here, was if this build can be adapted for core Mesmer?
I haven't unlocked neither Mirage nor Chronomancer yet.
I have to use a core mesmer build to get through HoT or PoF to unlock both Elite professions...

Basically I used GS/Staff and wanted to generate as many clones as possible. I didn't shatter much at first till I got use to knowing when I could get more clones out fast. This is how I intend to level up my 3rd Mesmer lol.
I'm on my phone so I think I chose the correct traits. I'm sure someone with better help will come along. Just look at the traits and pick the ones that generate clones, gives you some defense through range. For me, I didn't much care about pumping out mass damage so much as being able to stay alive.

I think you are the right people who can possibly help me a lot :-)
Thank you

It's hard to tell how much difficulty you have picking these things up, but I do have a build for the type of player that is never going to "git gud" (no offense intended to anyone here!) . The build is specifically designed to be 1) Inexpensive to gear, 2) As uncomplicated as possible, and 3) As forgiving as possible.

I've basically taken it to the limits from using the most defensive weapon available and not including a weapon swap to utilizing a passive healing skill. With this setup you can literally stand in the fire and just push buttons at random. As long as you keep dodging and pushing 1 you should find making your way around PoF/HoT easy (Although soloing champions might still require you to step up your game a little bit from just pushing 1/dodge and buttons at random!).

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer me. This is indeed a very good and helpful build for beginners with the profession.
I had this kind of build in mind, when posting in this thread. My problem with this build is just, that I haven't unlocked Mirage!
What I had in mind, when posting here, was if this build can be adapted for core Mesmer?
I haven't unlocked neither Mirage nor Chronomancer yet.
I have to use a core mesmer build to get through HoT or PoF to unlock both Elite professions...

I think you are the right people who can possibly help me a lot :-)
Thank you

It's hard to tell how much difficulty you have picking these things up, but I do have a build for the type of player that is never going to "git gud" (no offense intended to anyone here!) . The build is specifically designed to be 1) Inexpensive to gear, 2) As uncomplicated as possible, and 3) As forgiving as possible.

I've basically taken it to the limits from using the most defensive weapon available and not including a weapon swap to utilizing a passive healing skill. With this setup you can literally stand in the fire and just push buttons at random. As long as you keep dodging and pushing 1 you should find making your way around PoF/HoT easy (Although soloing champions might still require you to step up your game a little bit from just pushing 1/dodge and buttons at random!).

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer me. This is indeed a very good and helpful build for beginners with the profession.
I had this kind of build in mind, when posting in this thread. My problem with this build is just, that I haven't unlocked Mirage!
What I had in mind, when posting here, was if this build can be adapted for core Mesmer?
I haven't unlocked neither Mirage nor Chronomancer yet.
I have to use a core mesmer build to get through HoT or PoF to unlock both Elite professions...

Unfortunately, the gimmick that makes this build so easy and effective is based on mirage cloak. You generate damage while avoiding damage simply by dodging and autoattacking and, with sigil of stamina, every kill refills the endurance bar creating a bit of a snowball effect. Thus you don't strictly need to know any sort of rotation at all to succeed. On top of that, the extremely high condition damage achieved with 17% toughness converted to condi damage and stacking condi damage on kills helps to make up for using a set that stacks survivability stats. The result is a build that evades a ton of damage and on top of that can easily afford to take damage as well. And it still deals surprisingly good damage in return!

Core mesmer doesn't have the ability to increase damage by dodging and it's more effective with a power setup, which makes it harder to stack vitality and toughness without giving up even more damage. The result is you're going to be less tanky while dealing less damage and you'll need to have some idea of what you're doing to succeed. In short, there is no magic build for core mesmer that's going to let you roll your face across the keyboard and win like you can with the mirage build I listed.

Having said that, if you see me in game feel free to send me a message. If I'm not busy I'm usually happy to run people through some hero points in HoT.

I just started Mirage, and am running Carrion exotic gear to start, with a few pieces of Vipers. I noticed that even with evade frames I was taking more damage than was comfortable. Granted I'm still learning Mesmer/Mirage and at times I'm just pushing buttons, but I decided to take a gamble and invested in Superior Runes of Tormenting. (I'm also running Illusions for Main the Disillusioned). Wow what a difference. The tooltip suggests the heal is 'small', but you are literally crapping out torment at every turn, and with no ICD on the rune, the bigger the group the more heals you will see. I was taking on Veteran Djinn in PoF with zero effort, never dropping below 85%.

Now I'm not taking on champs/legenadary mobs solo so it's hard to compare, but those runes might allow for more DPS gear (Vipers) vs. Trailblazer.

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:
I just started Mirage, and am running Carrion exotic gear to start, with a few pieces of Vipers. I noticed that even with evade frames I was taking more damage than was comfortable. Granted I'm still learning Mesmer/Mirage and at times I'm just pushing buttons, but I decided to take a gamble and invested in Superior Runes of Torment. (I'm also running Illusions for Main the Disillusioned). Wow what a difference. The tooltip suggests the heal is 'small', but you are literally crapping out torment at every turn, and with no ICD on the rune, the bigger the group the more heals you will see. I was taking on Veteran Djinn in PoF with zero effort, never dropping below 85%.

Now I'm not taking on champs/legenadary mobs solo so it's hard to compare, but those runes might allow for more DPS gear (Vipers) vs. Trailblazer.

Funny you should mention that. I was taking a little break from GW2 when the rune changes went through and only found out about this one the other day. I haven't had a chance to play much since then, but I did a few hours in WvW and the results were quite good. I expect in PvE it will be even better as you can much more easily stay in axe fighting multiple opponents. Obviously, if boss solos are your goal, the effect will be somewhat diminished by the fact that you have only one target, but the healing should still be significant (really any healing is significant for a class that avoids damage as well as mirage!).

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:
I just started Mirage, and am running Carrion exotic gear to start, with a few pieces of Vipers. I noticed that even with evade frames I was taking more damage than was comfortable. Granted I'm still learning Mesmer/Mirage and at times I'm just pushing buttons, but I decided to take a gamble and invested in Superior Runes of Tormenting. (I'm also running Illusions for Main the Disillusioned). Wow what a difference. The tooltip suggests the heal is 'small', but you are literally crapping out torment at every turn, and with no ICD on the rune, the bigger the group the more heals you will see. I was taking on Veteran Djinn in PoF with zero effort, never dropping below 85%.

Now I'm not taking on champs/legenadary mobs solo so it's hard to compare, but those runes might allow for more DPS gear (Vipers) vs. Trailblazer.

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:
I just started Mirage, and am running Carrion exotic gear to start, with a few pieces of Vipers. I noticed that even with evade frames I was taking more damage than was comfortable. Granted I'm still learning Mesmer/Mirage and at times I'm just pushing buttons, but I decided to take a gamble and invested in Superior Runes of Tormenting. (I'm also running Illusions for Main the Disillusioned). Wow what a difference. The tooltip suggests the heal is 'small', but you are literally crapping out torment at every turn, and with no ICD on the rune, the bigger the group the more heals you will see. I was taking on Veteran Djinn in PoF with zero effort, never dropping below 85%.

Now I'm not taking on champs/legenadary mobs solo so it's hard to compare, but those runes might allow for more DPS gear (Vipers) vs. Trailblazer.

As I dislike Pistol and prefer Focus, I'm running Phanstasmal Fury (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Phantasmal_Fury) in Illusions trait line for more bleeds from my clones, and instead of runes of Nightmare, running Superior Rune of Tormenting. (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Tormenting). Even with 0 Healing Power the massive amount of torment applications gives you a steady stream of healing. I suppose if you were struggling with survivability, you could run some Marshal's gear, but between constant heals, your clones taking aggro, and mirage cloak I don't think it would be necessary.

Sure enough, the extra healing on torment runes was enough to make the difference on some bosses I previously couldn't beat. First Mate Pekknik, Safiri the Carver, Zawadi the Turncoat, Lord Hanif, Embalmer Eweje, and Troopmarshal Olori Ogun are all pretty easy to do with these runes. You can afford to take a lot more damage, which is handy with these guys because they all have a lot of area effect damage and/or many adds to deal with.

Sorry, no videos. I think whatever updates have happened to the game over time have gone beyond the limits of my meager hardware. I can't seem to get a usable framerate in recordings.

Thought I would try it too! I went back to full viper, scepter/torch/pistol, and torment runes. The setup does more damage but is more squishy than trailblazer, dual staff, undead runes. Happy with it thanks! Have the trailblazer gear in pack for times like in dragons stand or some solo story where I need to be more tanky.

Right now I'm trying full Trailblazer with Torment runes. Scepter/torch + pistol, Dueling, Illusions, Mirage. Basically combining the offense and spot heals of the Torment scepter idea with with the tankiness of Trailblazer. Working well so far.

Not much has changed for the open world PvE build. Evade uptime is down a bit, but survival still feels quite effortless even against powerful enemies. Sustained damage remains remarkably strong given how tanky the build is. I even added the Legendary Forged Rampager to my list of solo kills!

Here's the latest build, which hasn't changed significantly since the addition of torment runes:

Not much has changed for the open world PvE build. Evade uptime is down a bit, but survival still feels quite effortless even against powerful enemies. Sustained damage remains remarkably strong given how tanky the build is. I even added the Legendary Forged Rampager to my list of solo kills!

Here's the latest build, which hasn't changed significantly since the addition of torment runes:

I'm not very mathematically inclined and I have a couple of questions I was hopeful you could help me with.

At what point does Bursting sigil become better than Malice?

And, I like to run the Staff/Staff variant. I have full Vipers and was thinking about switching to Trailblazer. How much of a dps loss would I be looking at for Staff/Staff? Would it be less of a loss than if I were running Axe/Torch?

Not much has changed for the open world PvE build. Evade uptime is down a bit, but survival still feels quite effortless even against powerful enemies. Sustained damage remains remarkably strong given how tanky the build is. I even added the Legendary Forged Rampager to my list of solo kills!

Here's the latest build, which hasn't changed significantly since the addition of torment runes:

I'm not very mathematically inclined and I have a couple of questions I was hopeful you could help me with.

At what point does Bursting sigil become better than Malice?

And, I like to run the Staff/Staff variant. I have full Vipers and was thinking about switching to Trailblazer. How much of a dps loss would I be looking at for Staff/Staff? Would it be less of a loss than if I were running Axe/Torch?

Thanks!

Glad you found this thread helpful!

Honestly, as I'm not a raider and maximizing damage output is not my focus, I'm not much of a number cruncher myself. However, without knowing everything that could potentially apply to this comparison, my guess is that bursting can never quite be as effective as malice unless you're above 200% condition duration or in cases where you don't expect your conditions to run their full course. Example: 100 base condi over time x 200% = 200 damage. Take away malice and it's 190. Add bursting 190 x 1.05 = 199.5. At lesser values of condition duration, malice will only be more effective in this comparison. Again, assuming this is how it works and there are no other factors I'm unaware of, which there certainly could be as I'm not a number cruncher!

I can't precisely quantify the answer to your second question, but I can tell you that when I ran viper only about 15-20% of my damage output came from power damage. And since we're talking solo play, I find that the amount of damage lost is negligible because you can play so much more aggressively using trailblazer. In fact, against tougher enemies it can actually be a damage increase. Where you will likely notice the loss most is in short engagements where quick damage has more of an impact and your conditions don't run their full course.

Having said that, if I had to guess I'd say that using only staff without axe/torch is more of a damage loss than switching from viper to trailblazer. If you're really concerned about increasing your damage output, I'd recommend using axe/torch with staff as your defensive backup (which, of course, is exactly what I run in open world as well as WvW/PvP!).

As my focus has changed lately to WvW where the latest patch brought some significant changes to my build (the open world PvE build remains unchanged), I thought I'd share my latest WvW build which is an adaptation of the open world setup.

My favorite thing about Mirage (and what drew me to the class) is the mobility and misdirection. This build has everything you need to be a confusing nightmare on the battlefield! But if you're familiar with my open world build, it should feel quite similar in terms of playstyle. It's basically the same general idea, but trades some damage for several highly useful defensive skills (e.g. double distortion on Auspicious Anguish, 9s stealth on mass invis, extra teleports with mirage advance/retreat and blink).

It's too early to tell if changes to other classes will have a major impact from the perspective of a WvW roamer, but my preliminary experience is that this setup strikes a great balance between sustain, mobility, and damage.

Hey! I finally managed to get my issues with video recording resolved. I still have to record in very low quality, but at least the framerates are viewable!

As there haven't been any major changes to the open world PvE build and I've shifted my focus lately to WvW roaming, I thought I'd share a new video of an adaptation of the open world build I've been using there (detailed in the previous post). This is a duel I recorded against a holosmith who put up a good fight today.